Working on acceptance

I feel like I may have settled into a routine. It has only been a few days, so I'm probably jumping to conclusions by saying that, but still.

My days haven't been so bad, but my nights aren't so great. I think about Jacob during the day, of course, but I don't get to the point of tears. I can act normal and even feel normal, which is pretty amazing. I can have conversations about things that a few months ago I couldn't have done and I can pay attention long enough to follow what is going on when others are talking, in meetings at work, and in movies and TV shows. When I realize that I have been feeling mostly normal, I'm shocked. Sometimes I feel removed from everything that happened, like it happened to someone else that I know very well, but I think about what happened without all of the emotions that usually accompany thoughts of Jacob. It is hard to believe that something so tragic, so life-changing, happened to us.

Things get harder at night, after we have made dinner and settled in for the night. I sit or lay on the couch and it all feels wrong. Millions of thoughts run through my mind but they all center around trying to figure out how Jacob can be gone, just like that.....how was he safe and alive and healthy in my belly and then he just died? Did it happen slowly or was it quick? What exactly was I doing when his heart beat for the last time? How can I just be going through my days and nights and when my baby, my son, is dead and his ashes are in a garden that gets really dark at night? I don't like how dark it gets there and it looks so lonely there at night. Soon it will be covered in snow and cold all the time. How can he not be here, being kept warm by me? How is it that I'm going to work and not taking care of him full-time? How is it that I am sleeping through the night and watching a movie and never being interrupted to nurse him or rock him or change his diaper?

I've been thinking these things for months, but those thoughts were always mixed in with so many others and with uncontrollable crying. Now the crying is more controlled. When I lay on the couch or in bed and think these things, I always get tears in my eyes. If I'm in bed with the blanket that he was wrapped in, I imagine him wrapped in the blanket now, safely beside me and smelling his sweet baby smell.

Today we did more unpacking and I picked up a Teddy Bear that Ted got me a few years ago. I absentmindedly picked it up, held it like a baby and started patting its back. When I realized what I was doing, I froze and started to cry. That is exactly how I would have held Jacob and he would have been about the same size. If things were different, I would have been standing in the basement holding him instead of that bear. It just seems so unfair.

The funny thing about my crying spurts lately is that I can turn them off. I don't want Ted to see me crying every time I do it, so I can turn it off if he walks in the room. He still sees me and I have cried with my head on his chest in bed twice in the past week, but I don't want him worrying about me all the time.

I wonder if I am working on acceptance now. Now that he should actually be in my arms and not in my belly, I just have to accept that he never will be in my arms again. I have no choice but to accept it. I seem to be fighting it and I don't want to accept it, but I have to. His absence is everywhere.

My brother-in-law's sister (who lives in Ireland) had her baby 2 days ago. She had a boy, of course. This baby is half-white, half-black too. My sister told me yesterday so that I wouldn't find out on Facebook, which I appreciated. My first thought was "thank God the baby is OK and she is OK". Then I started thinking of all the pictures that I'll be seeing of the baby who is exactly 2 weeks younger than Jacob should have been. Louise has been great since Jacob died, sending me nice messages on Facebook and never mentioning her pregnancy. I think I'll send her some pants that I knit for the baby and a card, but I will have to get someone else to buy the card. It would be just torture looking at all the 'congratulations on your new baby' cards.